By KEN MORITSUGU and NG HAN GUAN

TALATAN, China (AP) — High on the Tibetan plateau, Chinese government officials last month showed off what they say will be the world’s largest solar farm when completed — 235 square miles, the size of the American city of Chicago.

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China has been installing solar panels at a blistering pace, far faster than anywhere else in the world, and the investment is starting to pay off. A study released Thursday found that the country’s carbon emissions edged down 1% in the first six months of the year compared to a year earlier, extending a trend that began in March 2024.

The good news is China’s carbon emissions may have peaked well ahead of a government target of doing so before 2030. But China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, will need to bring them down much more sharply to play its part in slowing global climate change.

For China to reach its declared goal of carbon neutrality by 2060, emissions would need to fall 3% on average over the next 35 years, said Lauri Myllyvirta, the Finland-based author of the study and lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

“China needs to get to that 3% territory as soon as possible,” he said.

China’s emissions have fallen even as it uses more electricity

China’s emissions have fallen before during economic slowdowns. What’s different this time is electricity demand is growing — up 3.7% in the first half of this year — but the increase in power from solar, wind and nuclear has easily outpaced that, according to Myllyvirta, who analyzes the most recent data in a study published on the U.K.-based Carbon Brief website.

A solar farm is visible in Hainan prefecture of western China’s Qinghai province on Tuesday, July 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

“We’re talking really for the first time about a structural declining trend in China’s emissions,” he said.

China installed 212 gigawatts of solar capacity in the first six months of the year, more than America’s entire capacity of 178 gigawatts as of the end of 2024, the study said. Electricity from solar has overtaken hydropower in China and is poised to surpass wind this year to become the country’s largest source of clean energy. Some 51 gigawatts of wind power was added from January to June.

Li Shuo, the director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute in Washington, described the plateauing of China’s carbon emissions as a turning point in the effort to combat climate change.

“This is a moment of global significance, offering a rare glimmer of hope in an otherwise bleak climate landscape,” he wrote in an email response. It also shows that a country can cut emissions while still growing economically, he said.

But Li cautioned that China’s heavy reliance on coal remains a serious threat to progress on climate and said the economy needs to shift to less resource-intensive sectors. “There’s still a long road ahead,” he said.

One solar farm can power 5 million households

A seemingly endless expanse of solar panels stretches toward the horizon on the Tibetan plateau. White two-story buildings rise above them at regular intervals. Sheep graze on the scrubby vegetation that grows under them.

Tibetan sheep graze at a solar farm in Hainan prefecture of western China’s Qinghai province on Tuesday, July 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Solar panels have been installed on about two-thirds of the land. When completed, it will have more than 7 million panels and be capable of generating enough power for 5 million households.

Like many of China’s solar and wind farms, it was built in the relatively sparsely populated west. A major challenge is getting electricity to the population centers and factories in China’s east.

“The distribution of green energy resources is perfectly misaligned with the current industrial distribution of our country,” Zhang Jinming, the vice governor of Qinghai province, told journalists on a government-organized tour.

Part of the solution is building transmission lines traversing the country. One connects Qinghai to Henan province. Two more are planned, including one to Guangdong province in the southeast, almost at the opposite corner of the country.

Making full use of the power is hindered by the relatively inflexible way that China’s electricity grid is managed, tailored to the steady output of coal plants rather than more variable and less predictable wind and solar, Myllyvirta said.

“This is an issue that the policymakers have recognized and are trying to manage, but it does require big changes to the way coal-fired power plants operate and big changes to the way the transmission network operates,” he said. “So it’s no small task.”

Moritsugu reported from Beijing. Associated Press video producer Wayne Zhang contributed.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

In a stunning move, the Vikings have agreed to trade veteran defensive tackle Harrison Phillips to the New York Jets, a source confirmed to the Pioneer Press.

In exchange, the Vikings will get a 2026 sixth-round pick and a 2027 seventh-round pick. To complete the deal the Vikings will also flip a 2027 seventh-round pick to the Jets and have reportedly agreed to pay half of the salary Phillips is owed.

As surprising of a deal as it is on the surface, it starts to make a little bit more sense when considering the Vikings have a gluttony of talent in the trenches on defense.

They signed veteran defensive tackle Jonathan Allen and veteran defensive tackle Javon Hargrave in free agency. They have also seen young defensive tackle Jalen Redmond and rookie defensive tackle Tyrion Ingram Dawkins continue to emerge in training camp.

That played a role in making Phillips expendable.

The loss of Phillips will be felt on and off the field.

Not only has he been a mainstay on the defensive line ever since signing with the Vikings, he’s been an active philanthropist across Minnesota.

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APPLETON, Minn. — The Prairie Correctional Facility in western Minnesota could become a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center.

That’s according to new reporting from the Washington Post outlining the agency’s plans to double the number of people in detention.

The Trump administration is adding new detention facilities across the country to hold the growing number of immigrants it has arrested and accused of being in the country illegally. ICE centers were holding more than 56,000 immigrants in June, the most since 2019.

The Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton has a capacity of 1,600 people, which would make it one of the nation’s largest immigration detention facilities.

Minnesota’s only private prison, it was shuttered in 2010 but has been a subject of debate for years. In 2023, the Minnesota House passed a bill that would ban private prisons in the state. That bill did not make it through the Senate.

More recently, two Republican legislators from western Minnesota have proposed using the Appleton prison to house inmates displaced from the planned closing of the Stillwater state penitentiary.

State leaders in May agreed to a phased closing of Stillwater, citing safety and costly maintenance concerns at the 1914 facility in Bayport. Plans call for the prison to be shuttered by July 2029.

However, the Minnesota Department of Corrections rejected the idea of using the Appleton prison, saying that the purchase and operation of the long-vacant facility “is not regarded as an effective or efficient use of state resources.”

Appleton and ICE planning

A Jan. 5, 2010, photo, shows the Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton, Minn. Republicans pushed legislation though a committee on Tuesday, March 22, 2016, to re-open a privately run prison in western Minnesota despite repeated interruptions from protesters who briefly halted debate as they pushed lawmakers to instead consider ways to decrease the state’s prison population. GOP lawmakers have targeted the Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton, as a way to ease Minnesota’s overcrowded prisons. (Mark Steil/Minnesota Public Radio via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

ICE confirmed planning documents obtained by the newspaper were real, but said they were not final plans, said Washington Post reporter Douglas MacMillan.

Many local governments told the Post they did not have contracts with ICE — but that doesn’t mean new facilities couldn’t quickly develop.

“In some cases, it seems like this road map is aspirational,” MacMillan told MPR News. “What we have seen in the past six months is that this agency, under Trump, is willing to move into an area very quickly and try to fill it with migrants in a matter of weeks or months.”

Appleton City Administrator John Olinger told MPR News the city is not in communication with ICE and does not have a contract, but that Prairie Correctional owner CoreCivic is “aggressively pursuing” a contract with ICE.

In a statement, CoreCivic said of the Appleton facility, “We continue to explore opportunities with our government partners for which this site could be a viable solution.”

Elsewhere

Meanwhile, Nebraska announced plans Tuesday for an immigration detention center in the remote southwest corner of the state.

The facility will be dubbed the “Cornhusker Clink,” a play on Nebraska’s nickname of the Cornhusker State and an old slang term for jail. The alliterative name follows in the vein of the previously announced “Alligator Alcatraz” and “Deportation Depot” detention centers in Florida and the “Speedway Slammer” in Indiana.

Republican Gov. Jim Pillen said he and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had agreed to use an existing minimum security prison work camp in McCook — a remote city of about 7,000 people in the middle of the wide-open prairies between Denver and Omaha — to house people awaiting deportation and being held for other immigration proceedings. It’s expected to be a Midwest hub for detainees from several states.

Opposition

The “Alligator Alcatraz” facility in Florida has also been the subject of legal challenges by attorneys who allege violations of due process there, including the rights of detainees to meet with their attorneys, limited access to immigration courts and poor living conditions. Critics have been trying to stop further construction and operations until it comes into compliance with federal environmental laws. It’s designed to hold up to 3,000 detainees in temporary tent structures.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced last week that his administration is preparing to open a second facility, dubbed “Deportation Depot,” at a state prison in north Florida. It’s expected to have 1,300 immigration beds, though that capacity could be expanded to 2,000, state officials said.

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Also last week, officials in the rural Tennessee town of Mason voted to approve agreements to turn a former prison into an immigration detention facility operated by a private company, despite loud objections from residents and activists during a contentious public meeting.

And the Trump administration announced plans earlier this month for a 1,000-bed detention center in Indiana that would be dubbed “Speedway Slammer,” prompting a backlash in the Midwestern state that hosts the Indianapolis 500 auto race.

This report includes reporting from the Pioneer Press and the Associated Press.

“Short-term mistakes have long-term consequences. Once built, pipelines operate for decades, undermining renewable investments and perpetuating environmental injustice.”

A rally against a proposed Williams pipeline on the steps of City Hall in March 2019. Two of the company’s previously rejected projects are getting new consideration under the Trump administration, to the dismay of environmentalists. (Jeff Reed/NYC Council)

New York is once again under siege from the fossil fuel industry, and this time, they’ve got President Donald Trump and his enforcer, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency director Lee Zeldin, on board.

Two fracked gas pipelines, the Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) and Constitution projects, have resurfaced after being repeatedly shot down by state regulators—and NESE is being rushed through the permitting process. Our state must reject these projects once again, and draw a clear line: no new gas pipelines in New York.

Both pipelines were blocked by the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) for good reason: they endanger our water quality, violate our climate mandates, and work against our clean air goals. But emboldened by the Trump administration, corporate proponents have brought the projects back and are trying to make an end run around the law. Unless Gov. Kathy Hochul stands up for New Yorkers’ rights and pocketbooks, we’ll have more expensive, polluting energy boondoggles running through our state.

Every new pipeline locks New York into a fossil-fuel future that we cannot afford. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Harmful air pollution, irreparable damage to our water resources, a boost in harmful emissions as the climate crisis escalates—these all come with a new pipeline. Pipelines would ratchet up greenhouse gas emissions and entrench fracked‑gas infrastructure for decades, making it even harder for New York to meet the emissions reduction goals required by law under the 2019 Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (CLCPA).

They would also be environmentally ruinous. The Constitution project would impact at least 250 New York waterways and wetlands, spanning 85 trout streams and nearly 500 acres of forest. Courts agreed the state’s denial was based on sound science. NESE, similarly, was denied in 2020 based in part on its underwater impact in New York Harbor.

RELATED READING: Trump Lifts Pause on NY Offshore Wind Project, But Does it Come at a Price?

The governor says we need to explore all energy sources in the short term to ensure energy reliability. “All of the above” makes for a good soundbite, but it’s lousy policy. We need to focus on those energy sources that are cost-effective, advance our climate goals, and prepare us for the future.

Short-term mistakes have long-term consequences. Once built, pipelines operate for decades, undermining renewable investments and perpetuating environmental injustice. And then, when clean energy eventually becomes the standard, as it will, they will be left to rot in communities that already bear the brunt of misguided energy policy.

And it’s utility customers who will pay. National Grid estimates that its customers in New York City and Long Island will see a 3.5 percent increase in costs to pay for construction of NESE. Fossil fuel development is not only dirty, it’s economically indefensible.

Already more than 120 organizations are on record demanding that the governor reject any revival of NESE. Hundreds of Environmental Advocates NY’s own members have submitted comments. They say our climate and public health needs, not the interests of fossil fuel lobbyists, must drive energy policy.

There are far cleaner, cheaper, and faster ways to create more energy: public and private wind and solar build‑outs, geothermal, efficiency upgrades. That’s what New York’s renewable mandates demand, not doubling down on fossil infrastructure that locks in energy costs and carbon emissions for generations. 

To Gov. Hochul and Albany leaders: honor our climate commitments under the CLCPA, which mandates emissions reductions, and reflects our determination to protect our rights, communities, and climate future. Don’t cave to federal pressure or industry lobbying. Don’t gamble with clean water, public health, or climate leadership. Don’t ignore the communities who have to live with dirty air and water.

And when it comes to projects like NESE and Constitution, just say no. Instead, invest in the energy solutions of the future that New Yorkers need and deserve. It’s long past time to put people ahead of fossil fuels.

Katherine Nadeau is deputy executive director of policy and programs at Environmental Advocates NY.

The post Opinion: Trump’s Pipelines Will Endanger New Yorkers’ Health and Safety appeared first on City Limits.